Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
September 18, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor

Games Played:
LOTR: The Confrontation (x2), Clash of the Gladiators (x2), LOTR: Friends & Foes expansion, Cube Farm, Wyatt Earp

Players:
John, Everett, David, Dale, Tim, Rick, Doc, Bill, and Ben

We had a small turnout tonight. Only had 5 players starting out, but we gained 3 refugees from Bill Continuum RPG game that didn't run for lack of players.

LOTR: The Confrontation: Everett, John

Nope, I'm still not tired of this game. John and I had to attend the Student Organization Orientation before we started, so we were the first two people to show up and had some time before the others showed up. So I, of course, pulled out LOTR: The Confrontation. I wanted to play dark as this was John's first game, and out of about eight previous games, I had only seen dark win once, but I am convinced that an experienced player could win with dark. This proved to be the case in our games. In the first game I charged straight down the middle until I found Frodo with Sam in Arthedain. My first piece was Noble Sacrificed by Sam. John then made the mistake of advancing a character from the Shire to Arthedain, joining Frodo, instead of moving one of the characters in Cardolan forward, which would have given Frodo the opportunity to retreat if attacked. So my next move was to send the Black Rider forward to attack in Arthedain, and I got lucky and attacked Frodo first. Without him being able to use his ability to retreat, I easily defeated Frodo. Instead of switching colors, John wanted to try the good side again. The second game was much closer; however I was still able to jump to an early lead in pieces by being very aggressive again. The game whittled down to John having only Frodo left and with me having 3 pieces before Frodo was forced to attack the Warg, and then it was all over. I believe the key to winning as the dark side is to play aggressively, but also being prepared for the sneaky little things the nasty hobbitses can do.

1st game score: Everett 8, John 6
2nd game score: Everett 2, John 0

Ratings: Everett 8, John 8

Clash of the Gladiators: Everett, John, Dale, and David

Dale and David arrived, and we were still hoping for more players to show up, so we decided to play a quick game of Clash of the Gladiators. Dale was the only one who hadn't played before. John took his usually aggressive approach of taking mostly swordsmen and one trident "I want to roll lots of dice". The rest of us went for more balanced teams, but each of us had our own favorite combinations. David had the hot dice off the start, racking up about 8 kills by the end of his 3rd turn. However, his luck went cold at the end of the game, and John came out top in the long run. It may be due to the fact that with his hordes of swordsmen out there, nobody wanted to attack him, so he had lost nobody at a time when the rest of us were limping around with most of our teams reduced to 1-3 gladiators. Nobody got to play the animals (my favorite part) since Dale, David, and I were all wiped out on the same turn.

Scores: John 22, David 14, Everett 10, Dale 6

Ratings: John 6, David 6, Everett 5, Dale 5

Lord of the Rings: Friends & Foes: Everett, David, John, Dale, and Tim

John had just picked this up on Monday and was itching to play it, so we gave it a try. All of us had played the original, but this was the first time for the expansion for us. We got off to a horrible start, finishing all of the events in Bree while only taking a couple of steps on the adventure paths. We missed out on almost all of the good stuff in Bree. David, playing Sam, had to use his special ability right away to keep Sauron from advancing SEVEN spaces. Moria was almost as bad. Even though we did finish it, we had to wade through most of the events. By then it was only a matter of time until we lost. All the hobbits except for Merry (John) were within 3 spaces of Sauron, we had a long way to go, and we had too many foes out to skip anything. As expected, Sauron caught up with the ring-bearer, Frodo (me) in the middle of Helms Deep. I do like the foe cards from the expansion, but I think they sort of break the theme somewhat, which is one of the highlights of the original game. "What do you mean, the general of Mordor is in Bree?" I am looking forward to playing this again.

Scores: We lost. Sauron had moved from the 15th space to the 9th space where he overtook us.

Ratings: John 8, Dale 7, Tim 7, Everett 6, David 6

Clash of the Gladiators: (part deux) Doc, Bill and Ben

The refugees from Bill's canceled Continuum game showed up while the rest of us were playing LOTR:FF, so they grabbed Gladiators and took a turn in the pits. Doc was the only veteran, but it didn't seem to help him much. I didn't get a chance pay much attention to their game, but someone (I think Bill) left me a couple of notes: "Fun! It's Ninja Bears! It is assumed that I killed the bear."

Scores: Bill 18, Ben 18, Doc 16

Ratings: Doc 9, Bill 8, Ben 8

Cube Farm: Doc, Ben, Bill

After slaughtering each other in the arena, our gladiators decided to slaughter each other in the office. As with most of the Cheap Ass games recently, this one did not get rave reviews. They didn't leave me much in the way of notes, so all I have is the results:

Scores: Bill 102, Doc 90, Ben 74

Rating: Bill 4 (or one star, I can never be sure with Bill), Doc 3, Ben 1

Wyatt Earp: David, John, Tim, Everett, and Rick

We had a little difficulty settling on this game. We had Aladdin's Dragons out, which is one of John's favorites, but not so much for David and me. I wanted to play Ricochet Robot, but nobody will play that with me anymore (I have to pretend to be playing another game, and then stick my nose in when they aren't expecting me.) So, since I was the only one to have played Wyatt Earp before, we decided to give it a try. Technically, we had one too many people, but didn't see where it would really matter that much and it turned out that it worked fine with five. (However, I think people's first impressions of a game shouldn't be tainted by trying to play it outside the normal parameters.) The only problem with 5 players is that you more frequently end the round by running out of cards in the draw pile than by someone clearing their hand. I had a strong start, gaining $10,000 in each of the first two rounds, each with a solo capture, to put me within $5,000 of winning. Everybody ganged up on my on the third round so that I didn't get enough to finish the game, but on the fourth round I did well enough to stay ahead and claim the win. David gets the come-from-behind award, having only $1,000 after the first round, due to me sticking his Belle Star in a hideout. However he had a great 3rd round, scoring at least one solo capture and sharing many others, and ended up coming in second. I generally don't like rummy games, but this one I don't mind.

Scores: Everett $32,000, David 27,000, Rick 25,000, John 20,000, Tim 18,000

Rating: Tim 6, Everett 6, Rick 6, David 5, John 5